


This horror will grow mild, this darkness light

by Pseudothyrum



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: M/M, Will Graham is a fallen angel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-10
Updated: 2015-05-10
Packaged: 2018-03-22 07:02:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3719572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pseudothyrum/pseuds/Pseudothyrum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will Graham is a fallen angel, and Hannibal Lecter has caught his attention</p>
            </blockquote>





	This horror will grow mild, this darkness light

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the kinkmeme prompt "How about a fic where Will is Satan instead of Hannibal? ...Will finds he wants the companionship. The obsession grows mutual. So eventually he reveals his true form (the beautiful but dark fallen angel) for the first time ever to a mortal, and Hannibal couldn't be happier..."

In the beginning, he was meant to watch humanity, to neither idolise nor demonise them, merely expect the worst and ensure that, when they fell to their base natures, they got the treatment that they deserved. With endless years of this his idealism and zeal grew brittle and cracked, edges sharpened on the myriad cruelties that humanity chose to inflict on itself. He grew hard and cruel, and he forgot what it was to forgive; he forgot the meaning of mercy. He fell. He fell and fell and fell.

***

He has been wandering the Earth for millennia now, touching upon hundreds of thousands of lives as he has passed. He has witnessed humanity from its birth, seen it in its moments of brightest hope and redemption, but he knows that, ultimately, they will end in destruction and depravity. This is the human condition. He has become a firm believer in the notion that, should you give humanity enough rope, it will assuredly find a way to hang itself. There is no need to be the whispering shape in the dark, the tempter dangling forbidden fruits before the faces of innocents. If there is one thing he has learned in his lifetimes here, it’s that there is no such thing as an innocent person, only one who has not yet found their way to the precipice. 

Hannibal Lecter was a man who had not only found his way to this edge, but had leapt over it. His case should not be one of much interest to him, he was in many ways like many other men that he had met before, tyrants and despots, cannibals and killers. And yet he could not help being drawn towards the man, his crimes shining like a beacon in amongst the common, mundane muck of humanity. He knows to expect the very worst, but Hannibal has transcended that, has elevated destruction to an art form. 

***

He slides into the skin of Will Graham, FBI profiler, creates a mask so perfect that it is as though he has always lived this life, so real that nobody remembers a time before he existed. He nests in the careful construction of a life, and he baits his trap. He stumbles like a wounded animal, a frantic fluttering of broken wings in the underbrush. Hannibal Lecter, ever the graceful predator, circles him, cataloguing his weaknesses, every muscle tensed to pounce. 

But the trap never springs and the predator never pounces. He draws Hannibal in, and feels himself drawn closer in return. They dance around one another, orbits decaying as their fascinations leach through the careful constructions of their people suits. They see each other more truly than any other person has, though they speak only in meaningful glances and implication and the taste of blood, hot and fresh on the tongue. It is intoxicating. He feels himself falling again, but now it is a joyous feeling, a rush of adrenalin and destruction and terrible, terrible power. He watches as the lives they touch wither and warp and die, stunted by his presence and by Hannibal’s machinations. He is fascinated by the way that they can wound together, by the way Hannibal so intimately understands people and how to hurt them despite being so much more than they could ever be. 

***

Hannibal tells him that he smells like electricity, like salt, like iron. Hannibal presses in, too close, not close enough. Hannibal knows everything and yet nothing at all and every part of him sings when they are together.

He is Will, and when he steps out of his skin he is more than Will. He is darkness and light all at once and not at all, and Hannibal’s eyes reflect it all, gleaming like pools of spilled blood. Hannibal tells him he is beautiful, Hannibal’s lips are bitten red and raw, Hannibal’s clever fingers dance over ancient flesh and bone.

He has finally found salvation, or perhaps he has given it up. He is risen.


End file.
